COSMIC
JOE AND THE SOUND OF SILENCE

There
is nothing that can be of greater spiritual help than music. Meditation
is a preparation for perfection; but it is music that comes nearest
to it…. Both work together; for they are one…

Hazrat
Inayat Khan: On Music

Following the
release of the Brian Eno produced Day of Radiance album, in 1980,
Laraaji used the electric zither to make further solo recordings alongside
collaborations with Roger Eno, Bill Nelson and Kate St. John as Channel Light
Vessel, with Japanese hip-hoppers Audio Active, Bill Laswell and sound therapist
Jonathan Goldman.

In addition
to concerts Laraaji has, for many years, conducted regular Laughter Meditation
workshops and performed at various meetings and gatherings across the USA,
and been an important contributor to healing Arts festivals and conferences
as his beautiful Celestial sounds create a warm and soothing atmosphere for
both presenters and visitors.

As devotee of
the late Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, founder of the Ananda Ashram in Harriman,
New York, he was initiated as Laraaji Nadananda in 1985.

With the release
of a new solo album, My Orangeness, in 2002 Laraaji granted this
rare interview to Kevin Eden where he talks about his life,
works and beliefs.

It’s
3.00 am in Harlem, New York. I have been e-mailing Laraaji for the past year
to try and interview him. He agrees this specific time; the quiet time, when
he’s recording or meditating. I phone his number but to my surprise the best
answering machine message I’ve ever heard comes on:

“I’m not able
to come to the phone in the present time,
but you may leave your message of any length, reason or rhyme,
and I’ll get back to you.
In the meantime have a beautiful you. Ha ha ha.”

He eventually
picks up the phone and over the next two hours we touch on all aspects of
his life, from his early years to what he was doing the night before.

Edward Larry
Gordon was born in 1943 in Philadelphia but spent his early life in New Jersey
where, from the age of ten, he studied violin, piano, trombone and voice,
performing with school orchestras, marching bands, church and school choirs
and even winning a state-wide composer’s competition. Accepting a scholarship
he went to Howard University College of Fine Arts in Washington D.C. to study
music theory, composition and piano.

After four years
of studies he moved to New York where he pursued a dual career as a stand-up
comic and actor as well as playing electric piano in the Winds of Change group.

By the early
seventies Edward began to have doubts as to his future direction and began
looking around for inspiration or guidance.

“The words Transcendental
Meditation struck my fancy. I took my interpretation of it and practised it.
There was a man named Richard Hittleman and it was after reading his book
on Meditation for Westerners I felt less intimidated with the Eastern mysticism
surrounding meditation. It allowed me to practise meditation and get into
a quiet zone for myself and it directly enhanced my creativity with music
so I could see the results.”

Edward was certainly
not the first to beat a path to the East looking for spiritual inspiration.
The Beatles, John and Alice Coltrane and others had been there in the sixties
and around the same time as Edward was experimenting with meditation fellow
musicians John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana were making their own explorations.

“I was more
aware of the actors, like Shirley Maclaine and The Beatles, of course. Definitely
some celebrities and musicians such as Alice and John Coltrane.”

Following a
particularly deep meditative experience, in 1974, Edward believed he had found
a new and life-altering direction to take.

“I had a much
larger sense of the space and time that I’m actually living in. So the music
that I heard in a vision was an endless kind of music, it was multiple layered
and supported the intuition that I had that everything was going on in the
here and now.”

Following this
experience and with a growing sense of feeling uncomfortable with some of
the higher profile acting roles he was getting, along with the physical discomfort
of carrying a Fender Rhodes piano to various gigs, Edward found himself in
a pawn shop where he a bought a zither.

“I
bought it just to fool around with it, and I tuned it to one of my favourite
piano chords and eventually I turned it electric and found rhythms while using
the instrument the way I had been taught piano and created exercises for the
zither. So I played into a tape recorder and played it back and found ideas
that were good.”

Whilst these
experiments with a new instrument developed so did his inner searches.

“I was busy
exploring different teachers, reading materials going to meditation groups,
and seminars. Because my music was getting me invited I had free run of the
house with different speakers so I got a big helping of inspirational material
and it was time when I was looking for a firmer sense of identity.”

By 1978 Edward
had developed enough skill on the zither to take it onto the sidewalks and
parks on New York and entertain passers-by on a daily basis.

“What my intention
was on the sidewalks was that I was experimenting with sound and its ability
to communicate from meditative states. That functionally provided peace for
upliftment on the streets on New York.

“I would play
with my eyes closed and that was part of the test of the music. To see if
music, like they say, can soothe the savage beast. So I found that open tunings,
harmonic beautiful tunings, would set up a lofting atmosphere and it actually
influenced New Yorkers to slow down, listen and shift their vibration. Afterwards
I found out it could be called an Ambient atmosphere.”

The same year
Edward recorded his first solo album Celestial Vibration (Swan Records).
Unlike later recordings this album had a more atonal, dissonant edge to it.

“That first
album was more exploratory and it was also at a time when I was working with
a dance company. Their requirement was always opening me up to go into areas
that I hadn’t thought of. That album reflected that side of my vocabulary
at that time.”

The following
year brought further changes and opportunities. Edward decided to drop his
given name and adopt Laraaji; an obvious pun on his middle name.

“It also celebrates
Raa to include the sun; solar energy. I was moving in a more expansive sense
of my presence. I am moving within a cosmos rather than a history or a century
or a personal tradition. So I took the sun as a sense of centering, and also
to recognise the transition from Edward Larry Gordon, but not to have such
a radical departure from my name.”

Not long after
this Laraaji was playing in Washington Square Park one afternoon and after
he had finished playing and was counting his change he found a note saying,
‘Would you like to meet to consider a recording project?’ It was signed Brian
Eno. Although this name meant nothing to Laraaji he was curious as he had
had a similar encounter a month or two earlier.

“… in the same
place, a couple struck up a conversation with me and kept repeating the words
‘Fripp and Eno’. I wasn’t quite sure what they were saying; the name of an
organisation. They kept saying ‘you should listen to this music.’

“And that evening
they invited me to their place and they kept on talking about Fripp &
Eno. So I gathered that if I ever see the words Fripp & Eno again I’d
move closer to it.”

And move closer
to it he did. After meeting Eno they agreed to record what became Day
of Radiance; an album that reflected two sides to Laraaji’s performance,
three fast tracks called ‘Dance’ and two slower, gentler tracks called ‘Meditation’.
Although it would be another seven years before another album would receive
international coverage Laraaji continued performing on the streets as well
as issuing his own privately released cassettes throughout the eighties.

“I was receiving
many offers to perform for healing, yoga and meditation groups. They asked
me for long playing cassettes of my music for their private use.”

It was though
these various groups that Laraaji began to slowly absorb the various influences
and teachings he had read about and heard. All this finally led him to the
Ananda Ashram, in upstate New York, and its founder Shri Brahamanda Sarasvati.

“I’ve had so
many teachers but he was the one that I got closest to enough to give me some
personal guidance. His guidance was to take my spiritual experiences in the
seventies more deeply and more seriously. A wake up call from home. He was
the one who took it off the back burner and put it more into my life.

“The
essence of their teachings is peace and a healthy strong body and finding
your happiness and honoring it. They are not such a constrictive group.

“Swami Satchidananda
was another of the first guru teachers whose presence I investigated to get
my own bearings on where I wanted to go. And Ananda Ashram is in the country
and they invited me to come and be there for days, sometimes weeks, at a time.
That gave me an opportunity to be in a meditative, world peace orientated
place and also to listen to teachings which come down from the Vedic and also
an intention of bringing or visualizing east-west harmony on the planet.”

The merging
of Laraaji’s musical and chosen spiritual paths finally brought together the
two halves of the missing story that he had felt was there all along. This
concept of Nada Brahma is thousands of years old. A literal translation
is The World (or God) is Sound. In his book of the same name Joachim-Ernst
Berendt develops this theory by pulling in physics, biology and other sciences
to support what most religious or spiritual groups have known intuitively
for millennia. The practice of Nada Yoga, a path for self-realisation, through
the search for the inwardly perceived cosmic sound, goes to the heart of this
thinking. I ask Laraaji if he has practised Nada Yoga.

“The term is
used by certain teachers who teach under the name Nada Yoga, but for me I
used it intuitively for sound before I even called it Nada Yoga to bring to
higher states, or more centred states, or to even cross over into parallel
dimensions. It’s the use of sound as a vehicle to bring consciousness into
a place of union. I kind of feel that there’s a lobby of Eastern information
on that subject that I haven’t totally explored. I don’t feel qualified to
represent the Nada Yoga that has been established in the East. But I do relate
to the name Nada, sound vibrations. Even enough to take it into my Sanskrit
name: Nadananda.

“Also there’s
a comical twist on it because in Spanish nada means ‘nothing’. And that’s
just as well because it’s the sound of space without differentiated thingness.”

Another area
of Laraaji’s meditation work that has also crossed over into his recordings
is the use of laughter as therapy. This is not as ridiculous as it first sounds.
The Bhagavadgita speaks of laughter as the ‘source of meditation’,
and in a famous Zen exercise there is one that says, ‘Go into the mountains
early in the morning and roar with laughter at the rock face in front of you.’

“I would primarily
like to see people experiment with waking up laughing for seven days for fifteen
minutes with their eyes closed and to see how it impacts the rest of their
life. I tried it in the mid-eighties and I liked it a lot. After doing stand-up
comedy I found a benefit in accessing my own laughter, getting into my own
laughter.

“It’s forcing,
pretending, mimicking, allowing, and faking it until it ignites. When it gets
going it feel good and it gives the body a workout better, that doesn’t get
to it any other way including, as I’ve been told, endorphins. Working the
inner organs, relaxing the breath by releasing stale air from the deeper recesses
of the lungs. Opening the smile energy, and removing stress even as a preventative
measure. It softens and allows us to drop armour and become vulnerable. It
helps to clean out, or clear out, or balance out accumulated stress, if one
has that.”

The 1990’s saw
Laraaji’s public profile move into the international realm once more. Taken
under the management of Opal, Brian Eno’s company, Laraaji performed across
Europe and Japan with Michael Brook, Harold Budd and
Roger Eno. In 1994 and 1996 he recorded two albums, Automatic and
Excellent Spirits, in collaboration with Roger Eno, Bill Nelson and
Kate St. John that were released under the group name of Channel Light Vessel.
In 1995 Laraaji collaborated, albeit by post, with Japanese hip-hoppers Audio
Active on The Way Out is The Way In album.

“Ray Hearn,
the promoter, had gotten CLV out to Japan. I had sent
to him one of my greeting cards and it said ‘Think Cosmic, Act Globally’.
He called back a week later and said ‘why don’t you send out a DAT of that
kind of Rap thing you do, there’s a group here who can do something with it.’”

All three albums
presented a new side to the wider public, that of singer or laughter performer.
However, the majority of his singing or speaking is in tongues; the tradition
of allowing the subconscious to take over rationale and let that free-wheel
into saying whatever comes out.

“Gibberish,
spontaneous, none of the words are pre-meditated. It’s in the moment, forming
and sounds and tones, out and within a consciousness place.”

It is on both
CLV and Audio Active albums that both these areas of laughter and speaking
in tongues are fully explored.

“I don’t feel
that there are separate words, it’s a stream of sound, that I believe it’s
all one stream and there’s no point in there where one thing means something
more than the whole stream. A feeling may be imparted in what I’m bringing
through with this language; an intuition that I can loosely translate into
a word language. But I am not conscious of saying words in that time, I’m
conscious of inviting myself to go into intuitive reception and whatever comes
through in the reception I may translate into English words in certain instances.”

In 1998 Laraaji
collaborated on Sacrifice, a Bill Laswell Divination project. The
same year he accompanied Brian Eno to the Pavarotti Centre in Mostar for the
War Child charity.

“Brian and I
were taken to these two different situations. One was a refugee camp where
there were twenty children given to us to hang out with for an hour. I came
with hand puppets and some songs. We sat the children in a circle and myself
in the circle with hand puppets and the puppets would ask the children one
by one what they’re names were and the puppets would sing the names back to
them. I was amazed at how subtle some of the names were that I had to repeat.
It would be three or four times before the children would let me get away
with it. And then something called The Happy Foot Song, which allows every
part of the body to get up into a dancing, foolhardy, body moving song.

“Then maybe
six orphan children would walk to the Pavarotti Centre one day and they were
left with us and I did music therapy on them (laughs). They kept taking my
instruments and running around the plaza, so I had to catch them (laughs).
I had a gong, some chimes and a kalimba and I was trying to get them to just
sit still and relax but they were very up and hyper.”

Taking on board
of all these past influences I ask him why his recent solo albums, Shiva
Shakti Groove (Collective Recordings, 2000) and My Orangeness
(Vel Net, 2002), are more rhythmic based.

“I thought it
was about time, as I’ve made so much music that has been serene and flowy
and new-agey. Actually meandering is an acceptable term. I felt that doing
one more serene album wasn’t very necessary. When I do concerts people ask
me for albums. I think I’ve got the serene area covered for a while. So I
felt like doing something that would be friendly to chanting and devotional,
with an urban feeling; be part danceable and singalongable so Shiva Shakti
Groove came about.

Laraaji’s
new album, My Orangeness, finds him collaborating with a small group
of Italian musicians put together, and including, Vel Net label founder Mario
Volpe. It was Volpe who had invited Laraaji and others to perform at the 1998
Space Festival in the Aragonese Castle of Otranto, Italy.
Laraaji was invited back the following year to record in the ex-stable of
an old country house in Bari. All the music was recorded spontaneously with
over six hours of music being committed to tape. Volpe decided to leave it
two years before returning to the tapes for editing it down to the eleven
tracks that make up the album.

“My Orangeness
all came about in the studio, except the songs ‘Cosmic Joe’ and ‘This Little
Life of Mine’, which were works in progress over the years.

“I’m totally
surprised, having waited two years to hear it. I was surprised at the high
quality, I didn’t realise how high it was. I’m very pleased.

“Working with
the Italian musicians worked fine because I’m continually working with new
artists all the time without even a rehearsal and so I found that this was
the way that it happened. There were one or two of them that we didn’t speak
the same language but there was no difficulties. There were a few times, with
Mario translating, when we weren’t going in the right direction.

“We recorded
a lot of music and Mario edited it into the album. He sent me rough tracks
along the way. But I left it to him to mix and he came up with material that
I’d forgotten we’d recorded.”

The opening
track; ‘Cosmic Joe’, is undoubtedly autobiographical. It tells the story of
a man named Cosmic Joe who, not so long ago, on a certain ‘non-linear day’,
and with the use of his five senses discovers a sacred place called Holy Mo.
Cosmic Joe and Holy Mo embrace and become one. One in all, all in one.

Although Laraaji
stated from the outset that he would not be in a position to promote the album,
his busy schedule of Laughter Meditation workshops, concerts, conferences
and gatherings takes care of that.

“Yes, that it
something that has been going on since the early seventies, usually from the
end of June to the beginning of September. I’m also working with a group called
Dha Fuzion, multi-ethnic sounds, hip-hop, break dancing, funk. From the retreats
and concerts I do in the summer a growing body of friends invite me to their
parts of the country to give a weekend concert or workshop in a hall. So there’s
a soft edge during the rest of the year.”

Future projects
include a further album for Collective Recordings, already recorded, and he
has just recorded some overdubs for a proposed Bill Laswell produced Pharaoh
Sanders album. [To date only one track has been released on the Asana 3
album.]

The ultimate
question is what does Laraaji hope to achieve through his music.

“I’d say in
answer to your question that the vision, or the big picture that I’d like
to do, is be a part of or facilitate, or contribute to others having a very
pleasing moment or sound hearing experience.

“It may even,
as I talk about it, not even happen through music. It may happen through silence,
or walking through nature. But of that experience if I can help through music
to respect an inner place, whether call it meditation or contemplation, if
I can reflect it in my music or use music to suggest it to others to find
that place in themselves. That seems to be the direction and experimenting
with different approaches.

“When I practised
on the sidewalks on New York, around Central Park and the Museum of Natural
History I would notice during rush hour people had no notice of slowing down
and steeping out of the pace. Some would even get in the Lotus position on
the concrete sidewalk and listen to my music.

“So that experiment
of the years of playing on the sidewalks of New York showed me that transmitting
or representing meditative states of consciousness through sound imparted
to listeners an alternative way to be in the present.”

An alternative
way to be in the present. Laraaji’s words echo those of others whose
creative use of music allows the listener to experience it on more than one
level.

For the past
twenty-five years Laraaji has quietly, yet reassuringly, created a body of
work that politely stays in the background yet, when one truly investigates
it, contains a deeply enriching sense of joy and beauty.